It’s an argument I’ve often railed against, or at least fulminated against, the plastic straw argument of disempowered consumerism. That there is no point giving up plastic straws for environmental reasons because it makes so little difference in the larger scheme, when it is corporations and governments that are responsible for climate change. Its most recent manifestation I saw was in a discussion of travel-sized and sample-sized packaging where some argued that it’s the companies that have to change as they are the ones producing these. It wasn’t a universal argument by any means, but it’s one that I’ve seen rather often and I wonder if it mostly comes from highly consumerist societies like the US, Canada, UK, etc. There is an odd disempowerment of consumers by the consumers themselves, as though purchasing a sheet mask or using a straw is something they have to do, rather than a choice they make. There seems to me also something born out of an individualistic way of thinking: that there is no agency in being part of public pressure or public rejection of something unnecessary and harmful, and that society is not interconnected in a way that we are all culpable. Curious.
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